The more progress states make toward civil rights, voting rights, women's rights and the rights of our gays, transgenders, etc, the more of a disadvantage it becomes for the conservatives of the nation to claim this ambiguous moral high ground they speak of but do not practice and regress the nation backward to the days when they had a comfortable grip on determining what path the nation takes into its future, their own futures to be precise.
Of course, the religious fundies are fighting the same battle along side these stiff collared conservatives like Mike but for different reasons of which has everything to do with reversing the trend of The Church's dwindling numbers. Both entities seek a revival where their heady days of prominence lay in the distant past.
What they see as reviving their influence over the nation's peoples, the majority of the people see it as the conservatives' inability to successfully adapt to the changes that progress brings. In their effort to keep themselves from falling into disfavor of the people, they are attempting to block the roads of progress, this inevitable evolution our nation and the world will and is going through.
Good luck with that I say, just don't regret the choices you make when progress transforms you into anachronisms.